A federal court in Michigan denied a motion for relief from judgment in a case where Westlaw editors flagged the filed submissions as containing non-existent citations generated by ChatGPT and OpenAI tools. The case is another data point in the escalating judicial reckoning with generative AI in legal practice.
A Florida federal court held a sanctions hearing over AI-generated fake citations submitted in two consolidated employment cases, warning that ‘the use of AI as a legal research tool does not alter’ lawyers’ basic ethical obligation to provide true and accurate citations to the court.
The Delhi High Court dismissed a challenge to a GST show-cause notice, then discovered the petitioner’s counsel had cited AI-generated fake judgments throughout the pleadings. The court imposed exemplary costs and referred the matter to the Bar Council of Delhi, signalling that AI-assisted fabrication of case law is professional misconduct warranting disciplinary consequences beyond mere dismissal.
In a striking reversal of the typical AI hallucination pattern, Maryland’s Appellate Court published a custody/SIJS opinion that itself contains citation references that are incorrect or do not exist — preserved in the record because they appear in the official court opinion. This case represents th
A pro se plaintiff who used AI to draft a sanctions motion against a school district — without verifying the citations — was himself hit with $7,032 in sanctions when multiple fabricated citations were found in his filing, despite his completion of a Johns Hopkins AI ethics course.
The US Seventh Circuit admonished a petitioner’s attorney for including AI-generated non-existent citations and a false quotation in an immigration appeal brief — but imposed no financial penalty, signalling that a formal admonishment from a circuit court carries its own significant weight.
A Mississippi federal court ordered plaintiff’s attorney Aaron Randall Rice to show cause why he should not be sanctioned under Rule 11 after his opposition brief cited a fictitious Fifth Circuit case and included fabricated quotes from real decisions.
In a follow-up sanctions order in an employment discrimination case, the court sanctioned the senior named partner of a law firm after the firm’s associate used AI to draft a brief containing a fabricated citation. The supervising attorney argued he did not draft the brief and was unaware — the cour
A Maryland federal court dismissed an employment discrimination claim and held a sanctions hearing after pro se plaintiff Devin Robinson’s response brief cited non-existent cases and fabricated quotations, which Robinson attributed to AI assistance. The court dismissed all claims with prejudice, fin
The BC Civil Resolution Tribunal found a self-represented strata owner’s submissions cited non-existent CRT cases, incorrect citations, and a Strata Property Act subsection that does not exist — identifying these as ‘likely hallucinations generated by artificial intelligence.’
